Sensitive detection of microsatellite instability in tissues and liquid biopsies: Recent developments and updates

Microsatellite instability (MSI), a phenotype displayed as deletions/insertions of repetitive genomic sequences, has drawn great attention due to its application in cancer including diagnosis, prognosis and immunotherapy response prediction. Several methods have been developed for the detection of MSI, facilitating the MSI classification of cancer patients. In view of recent interest in minimally-invasive detection of MSI via liquid biopsy samples, which requires methods with high sensitivity to identify small fractions of altered DNA in the presence of large amount of wild type copies, sensitive MSI detection approaches are emerging. Here we review the available MSI detection methods and their detection limits and focus on recently developed next-generation-sequencing based approaches and bioinformatics algorithms available for MSI analysis in various cancer types. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Research Network of Computational and Structural Biotechnology.

Automated summary

Microsatellite instability (MSI) has significant applications in cancer, with sensitive detection methods developed for MSI classification. There is growing interest in minimally-invasive MSI detection through liquid biopsy samples.